Dutch Me Deadly

by Maddy Hunter

  My heart did a little stutter step. “Was he doing anything unusual while he was waiting? Talking to anyone? Looking at anything?”

  “The last time I saw him, he was checking out the ceiling beams. Did you notice them, Jackie? The dark wood added so much warmth and character to the room. I wish they could have displayed some of the original furniture. My dad’s house was full of antique fixtures and furniture, so I have a real appreciation for period pieces.”

  “So, Pete was … looking up when he probably should have been looking down?” I persisted.

  Beth Ann nodded. “He seemed mesmerized by those beams. Kind of like a bricklayer would be mesmerized by the craftsmanship of a really intricate chimney.”

  Was this what Pete’s mishap boiled down to? One inattentive step in the wrong direction? “Did the police find it likely that Pete’s accident might have been caused by nothing more than a misstep?”

  She shrugged. “They didn’t comment one way or the other. They just took down my account and told me I could leave.”

  “See?” Jackie gave my shoulder an “I told you so” poke. “No one pushed him. He fell.”

  Beth Ann’s cheeks flushed with exuberance. “This whole experience has been so exciting. I’ve never been questioned by the authorities before.” She flashed Jackie a breathless smile. “Have you ever thought of writing a police procedural novel?”

  My pulse slowed to a more natural rhythm. Calm leavened my guilt. Reason replaced paranoia. Why did I do this to myself ? Why did I always leap to conclusions, rush to judgment, see everyone as a suspect? I needed to get a grip. But more than that, I needed to stop thinking that I, Emily Andrew Miceli, knew more than the police.

  I propped my hip against the edge of the vanity, feeling my adrenalin high start to fade. “So I guess neither one of you got to see Peter Van Pels room,” I said in a less frenzied voice.

  “The queue was ridiculous,” said Beth Ann. “And the people who were waiting to jump in line were all clustered around me, which was great for eavesdropping, but bad for touring.”

  “I hope you heard more than I did.” Jackie primped in the mirror. “I was surrounded by duds.”

  Beth Ann referred to her notebook, which suddenly seemed affixed to her hand like a tattoo. “Ricky Hennessy was complaining to Chip Soucy about his bad knees and the prospect of total knee replacements in the near future. Mindy was staring at the floor, looking bored. Gary and Sheila Bouchard were standing close to the wall, saying nothing, but looking very uncomfortable. Laura LaPierre and Mary Lou McManus had their heads together, talking, but they were speaking so softly, I couldn’t hear what they were saying. Sorry.”

  Jackie cocked her head like the Victrola dog peering into the phonograph speaker. “How do you know everyone’s name already?”

  “Uhh—nametags?” Beth Ann regarded her wide-eyed. “Everyone’s wearing one. Haven’t you noticed?”

  Jackie twitched her freshly glossed lips. “Good point. Anything else?”

  “Mike McManus and Peewee were latecomers, so they were only there a couple of minutes, but I did overhear Mike ask Peewee if he’d been in school the day a few members of the football team let the air out of someone named Mr. Albert’s tires.”

  “Wait a sec.” I held up my hand to slow her down. If she was saying what I think she was saying, then—“All the people you’ve just mentioned were a stone’s throw away from you, right?”

  “Right.”

  “And you were a stone’s throw away from Pete Finnegan?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So everyone was within a stone’s throw of Pete?”

  Beth Ann looked a little cowed. “Yeaaah.” She dragged the word out as if it were caught in a slide flute.

  My heart raced. My mouth went dry. I pressed my palms to my forehead and squeezed my eyelids shut. “They were all there,” I choked. “Mike. Peewee. Ricky. Watching him like hawks. How could the police think it was an accident?”

  Beth Ann raised her eyebrows. “Do you suppose they never got the memo that Pete is the third person we’ve lost in two days? What if they don’t have police scanners over here? What if the officers who interrogated us didn’t know about Paula and Charlotte?”

  I glanced from one to the other. “Neither of you mentioned Paula to the police?”

  Jackie shot me the look. “Duh? You made us promise not to say a word to anyone. What do we look like? Stool pigeons?” But her expression registered slow enlightenment as she put two and two together. “OH, MY GOD! Pete didn’t fall. Someone pushed him!”

  “Hel-looo?” I cried.

  “Hello to you, too, dear,” said Nana, peeking over her shoulder as she scooted into the room. She pressed her back against the wall just inside the door and stood motionless for a moment, like a cat burglar waiting for the coast to clear. She offered us a placid smile as we stared across the room at her. “You girls go on with what you was talkin’ about. Just pretend like I’m not here.”

  What in the world? “Let me guess,” I said impassively. “You’re trying to avoid someone.”

  “Dang.” She pumped her fist. “What gave it away?”

  “Who are you hiding from?”

  Her eyes flickered with guilt. “Grace and Helen. I can’t take no more of them questions, so I’m goin’ rogue.”

  “In the restroom?” I regarded the cold tile and harsh lighting. “You can’t find someplace more relaxing?”

  “This’ll do. Especially since I don’t gotta haul water to flush the commode.”

  I looked at Jackie, Jackie looked at Beth, Beth looked at me—our glances posing a silent question. What now?

  I made an executive decision. “Nana, if I share something with you, will you promise to keep it under your hat until it’s officially made public later today?”

  “You don’t even gotta ask, dear.” She locked her lips with an imaginary key and dropped it down her bosom. “Good enough?”

  The door burst open. Tilly and Alice scuttled inside, pulling up short when they spied Nana. “Found you!” Tilly said breathlessly. “They’re stuck on question one-thirty-two. ‘If the subject could come back to earth as a vegetable, what would it be?’”

  “Back to earth from where?” asked Nana.

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Alice. “The Dicks don’t like vegetables.”

  I hung my head. Oh, God.

  “This is real bad timin’, girls,” Nana said apologetically. “Emily was about to tell me somethin’ I gotta keep under my hat.”

  Tilly regarded me with doe eyes. “I’m so sorry, Emily. Alice and I would be happy to leave.”

  Alice nodded agreement. “If we go now, we might even catch the tail end of the debate.”

  “Debate?” I asked.

  Tilly’s voice crackled with self-restraint. “Helen said she could picture Dick coming back as a tomato, but Bernice decreed that he’d have to come back as something else, because a tomato isn’t a vegetable. It’s a fruit.”

  “So Osmond is compiling a list of every fruit and vegetable known to man so the girls can see what their options are.” Alice sighed. “And naturally, there’s been some disagreement. Breadfruit was particularly contentious.”

  “Well, don’t go back without armin’ yourselves first,” instructed Nana as she mined the contents of her pocketbook. “Where’d I put them things? They’ll help you to end things real quick.”

  “Nana!” I started to hyperventilate as I imagined my grandmother being hauled off to jail on weapons charges. “Oh, my God. What are you packing?”

  She opened her palm. “Earplugs.”

  Hearing a sudden chorus of voices in the hall, I fired a glance at the door just as Margi came barreling through. “Told you so,” she called back into the hall. “They’re all holed up in the potty.”

  Helen and Grace rushed into the room as if their hair were on fire.

  “Wally wants everyone back in the cafeteria,” snapped Helen in her drill sergeant’s voice. “And you’re
already late, so move it.”

  “He has a big announcement,” said Grace.

  Unh-oh. Sounded as if he was going to break the news about Paula.

  Beads of sweat started popping up at my hairline. I needed to stay close to Helen and Grace. Lord, this was going to be brutal on them.

  “I wonder what all the intrigue is about?” tittered Margi. “Do you think he’s going to change the itinerary again?”

  Nana gave a little suck on her dentures. “If you was to ask me, I’d say he probably wants to tell us about that poor Peavey woman. I suspect them folks from Maine are gonna be real devastated when they find out.”

  What? I blinked dumbly. “You know? But—you can’t know. No one knows! How do you know?”

  “About the Peavey woman?” asked Nana.

  “Yes, about the Peavey woman.”

  “Bernice told us,” said Margi.

  My jaw dropped like an anvil. “How does Bernice know? No one knows. She can’t possibly know!”

  “She knows,” said Nana.

  “But—” I felt my throat constrict as I studied Helen and Grace. I hurried over to them, blubbering words of encouragement and consolation. “Please don’t jump to the conclusion that the boys are going to suffer the same fate as Paula. I promise you, they’re not dead. They’ll show up. I guarantee it. They’re alive, and well, and probably just made a wrong turn somewhere. In fact, I bet they’re back at the hotel even as we speak.”

  “I hope not,” said Helen. “If they stay lost just a little longer, we’ll have a shot at finishing these stupid questionnaires.”

  I frowned as she scooted everyone out the door.

  What?

  Nana crept back into the restroom and shuffled over to me. “Sorry about the interruption, dear. I thought they was never gonna leave. Now, what was it you wanted to tell me?”

  Fourteen

  “Emily don’t know nuthin’ about text messagin’, so we’re gonna have to vote by secret ballot.”

  Groans. Whines. Eye rolling.

  I regarded the gang in exasperation. “Hey, I admit it. I’m electronically challenged, but in fifty years, when everyone else’s thumbs are paralyzed with arthritis, I’ll be seen as a visionary. You’ll see. The proof will be in the pudding.”

  Margi raised her hand, her face alit with anticipation. “Are we having dessert?”

  The day had been so emotionally draining, we’d decided to hang up our walking shoes and eat dinner in the hotel dining room rather than hoof around Amsterdam, trying to find a fancy restaurant. I requested a group meeting in my room afterward, so we were all present, except for Jackie and Beth Ann, who’d stopped for an after-dinner drink in the lounge. I’d invited Wally, too, but having just returned from the police station, where he’d delivered the completed questionnaires and had the Dicks declared officially missing, he said he needed to spend the evening with his laptop.

  “I’ll get right to the point,” I began. “I need your help.”

  They came to attention like eager pups, eyes forward, ears perked, tongues practically hanging out of their mouths.

  “I’m hoping if I tell you what I’ve learned in the last two days, you might be able to see something I’m missing. I know accidents happen all the time, but if you ask me, three fatal accidents in two days smash the law of averages.”

  “Three?” argued Bernice. “How about five? Have you forgotten the Dicks? You’re all just too lily-livered to talk about them.”

  Silence ensued, followed by a collective intake of breath that sucked all the air from the room. Grace snatched up Tilly’s walking stick and brandished the rubber end cap at Bernice’s chest. “One more comment like that, Bernice Zwerg, and you’ll be looking at a major time-out in the potty, minus your hearing aid batteries. And we won’t need to vote on it.”

  “Grace’s edict carries by unanimous consent,” declared Osmond. “Put a lid on it, Bernice.”

  I leveled a piercing look at her. “And while we’re on the subject of hearing aids, would you like to tell me how you heard about Paula’s death before Wally announced it to everyone in the cafeteria?”

  She folded her arms across her chest and tucked in her lips. “No can do. I plead the fifth.”

  “Don’t pay Bernice no nevermind,” Nana urged. “Go on with what you was gonna tell us, dear.”

  After providing them with a brief primer on who was who in the Maine contingent, I told them everything I’d learned over the last two days, starting with Paula Peavey’s fondness for humiliating people and Pete Finnegan’s offer to neutralize her. I recounted my dinner on the canal cruise, where Gary Bouchard had accused Ricky Hennessy of ruining his prospects for a basketball scholarship, where it became obvious that both Gary and Pete had benefited from the death of a fellow classmate, and where I’d learned just how mercilessly the people at my table had mocked Laura LaPierre. I pointed out how both Charlotte and Paula had crossed Pete and ended up dead, and how Pete had threatened to ruin all his classmates by revealing secrets he’d known about them for years. “But before he can make good on his threat, he ends up dead himself.”

  “Did anyone from Maine know Pete was a ticking time bomb?” asked Tilly.

  “Mike McManus,” I said, then recalling the scene outside the secret annex, “and Peewee, I think.”

  “Pushing Pete down the stairs would have been a pretty convenient way to shut him up,” said George. “You think one of those fellas did it?”

  “I know they were standing practically on top of him when he fell, so they certainly had the opportunity.”

  “What do you s’pose Pete knew that them two fellas wanted kept secret?” asked Nana.

  “That’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question. I don’t have a clue, but every time I talk to a reunion person, the conversation always finds its way around to a classmate named Bobby Guerrette, who disappeared on their Senior Skip Day and was never seen again. If they’re hiding skeletons in their closets, my gut tells me, the skeletons are wearing Bobby Guerrette’s face.”

  “Sounds like we’re flirtin’ with a cold case file,” said Nana.

  “But it’s spilling over into the present day,” fretted Helen. “How do we know my Dick’s disappearance isn’t connected with one or more of them trying to keep their skeletons hidden?”

  I had no answer to that.

  “Did anyone notice how composed all the Mainers were when Wally announced that Paula Peavey was dead?” asked Tilly. “It was almost as if the news didn’t come as a surprise. I didn’t notice a single tear being shed.”

  “There wasn’t no tears for Pete neither,” said Nana.

  “Good thing Wally didn’t threaten to cancel the tour,” said George. “I think the Mainers would have staged a rebellion.”

  “Isn’t it nice how the tour company is going to handle all the arrangements for flying the bodies back to the states?” Alice chimed in. “It must give folks great peace of mind to know that if they get knocked off in Amsterdam, their bodies won’t be left to molder away in a forgotten corner somewhere, while their cheap relatives bicker over who’s going to get stuck with the air freight bill.”

  Helen looked intrigued. “Do you suppose there are other perks in our travel packages that we don’t know about yet?”

  Before they could take off on another unrelated tangent, I let out an attention-getting whistle. “Do you want me to tell you what I know about Bobby Guerrette and Senior Skip Day?”

  Nods. Mumbles of assent.

  “It’s pretty depressing, just so you know.”

  Margi grabbed a box off my bedside table and waved it in the air. “I’ve got tissues.”

  I recounted every detail I could remember about Bobby Guerrette, focusing on the qualities that seemed to define him—his intelligence, his popularity, his strong self-image—qualities he’d developed despite having no family other than the nuns at the orphanage. I told them how he’d appointed himself as Laura LaPierre’s protector, and how he’d befriende
d Mike McManus in the days when Mike had been a super geek. I related how he’d stayed home from his senior prom rather than attend with Paula Peavey ,and how he’d been in line to be valedictorian of his class. “When he disappeared, Pete got bumped up to valedictorian, Laura became salutatorian, and Gary Bouchard got elevated to fifth in his graduating class, which was apparently a big status thing for Gary’s father.”

  I talked briefly about Senior Skip Day, how the in crowd had dropped in and out of the gathering that was going on at a local park, how most of the kids spent the day getting hammered, how Bobby was forced to hitchhike back to the orphanage later that night, how Ricky Hennessy saw Bobby get into the car that apparently drove him into oblivion, and how Mike and Peewee backed up Ricky’s eyewitness account.

  “Was Paula Peavey considered a member of the in crowd?” asked Tilly.

  “I got the impression that she ran with the in crowd because she was so vicious, they were afraid what she might say about them if they ignored her. Chip Soucy told me that she wasn’t specifically invited to hang out with them on Senior Skip Day, but her parents had given her a car for graduation, so she showed up anyway.” I threw them a pleading look. “Can you see why my head is about to explode?”

  Tilly removed a pen and notepad from her pocketbook and began taking notes. “Pete Finnegan, Laura LaPierre, and Gary Bouchard benefited most from young Bobby’s disappearance. Is that correct?”

  I nodded. “All three reaped the academic rewards of Bobby’s not graduating.”

  “You s’pose one a them coulda done that young man in?” asked Nana.

  I sighed. “Laura idolized him, so I’d take her name off the board. I don’t know about Pete and Gary. Do you think they would have had the stomach to kill a fellow student to improve their academic ranking?” I shivered. “It’s just so brutal.”

  “Were Pete and Gary at the park when Bobby got into that car?” asked George.

  “Pete wasn’t. No one invited him to participate. But Gary was there, which pretty much gives him an airtight alibi.”

  “Who said he was still there?” asked Bernice. “His buddies? If you believe that, I’ve got some land in Florida I’d like to sell you.”